Updated: About my career and about the Mason Mental Health Center ||||| My 1400+ Daily Kos political stories are here || Open just this page || Back editions (archive) in right column.
As you’ve probably heard, Gov. Greg Abbott said the following: "We as a state, we as a society need to do a better job with mental health. Anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health challenge. Period. We as a government need to find a way to target that mental health challenge and to do something about it." Texas ranks as the worst state in providing mental health services. (ABC News). Abbott just serves as an example which is typical of Republican governors when it comes to how they spend their states money. For example (from The Washington Post): “In April, Abbott transferred $211 million away from the state’s Health and Human Services Commission, which oversees mental health programs, as NBC News has noted. The money was transferred to support Operation Lone Star, the governor’s controversial deployment of National Guard and law enforcement resources to the border.”
All the sensible actions actually addressing guns should be taken. For example: make the AR-15 type assault rifles and high capacity magazines illegal, mandate background checks for all firearms sales, not allow people judged to be dangerous to buy any guns, and stop sales to anyone under 21. Even if such action were taken tomorrow, and others like assault weapon buyback programs, the results would take a long time to show an effect.
The Republican proposal of what they call “hardening schools” is just a symbolic gesture that would have only one benefit: it would give children a sense of security. It would not stop resourceful potential school and other mass shooters who could still decide to thwart security measures inside of schools or make their attacks elsewhere.
The substantial increase in mental health services both in the community and counseling in the schools would have an almost immediate impact.
Although parents may see signs of developing violent tendencies in their children they are sometimes in denial. When they do see this they should have resources readily available to them. Teachers are often the first people who see signs in a child that could be indicative of a mental health condition that could lead to violent acting out.
Regardless of whether anyone sees more obvious signs of violent behavior such as bullying, or precursors to violence such as being bullied, developing, school based services for other behaviors which should be assessed such as being withdrawn, anxious, or easily distracted should be also referred to the counseling department. Sometimes the squeakiest wheel gets the grease, but this shouldn’t lead to others in need being underserved.
Teachers should be able to be able to refer the children to a well staffed school counseling programs, and the counselors in those programs should be able to refer children who need more extensive treatment to mental health programs in the community that have enough therapists to provide optimal services which will sometimes include both individual child therapy and family therapy.
Addendum:
Based on my own experience as the director of community mental health programs I’ve concluded that at a minimum community mental health program and school counseling programs ought to have close relationships and ideally liaison people who meet together on a frequent basis and whenever there’s a problem. Ideally every community should have a program like Clinton County, Michigan had when the heads of all agencies serving children met together to work on addressing issues related to children. This was called the CAN Council (for Child and Neglect). The members were the mental health center director, the director of Protective Services, the chief assistant prosecutor for the county, the Friend of the Court, the head of the school counseling department, the chief county detective, and the juvenile court director. This cost nothing but an hour of each agency’s time but was crucial in assuring excellent services to at risk children and families.
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